Joyeaux Noel
by TWSythar
Summary: Merry Christmas - as requested by readers of CS. Jehan goes home for Christmas, Grantaire before he met Les Amis, Jehan's thoughts during Capitain Scaramouche to date, and Enjolras and Combeferre celebrate Christmas.
1. O Holy Night: Jehan

**A/N Merry Christmas and Happy New Year Insanemistosingsmore. This is for your request where Jehan goes home for Christmas. As it hasn't come up in the series yet, I'll clarify that my Jehan comes from a rather complicated background... so enjoy and I hope you like Jehan as this is his very first piece!**

Christmas was an occasion for celebration, for remembering the past and rejoicing in the future. Noel, Noel, Noel – thus sing the angels gathered in stone around the crowned heads of our churches, and thus should sing our hearts in response. Noel and Joy to all mankind.

Jehan kicked the snow off his boots and stepped into the small church, bowing his head and crossing himself as he did so. It was silent – a serenity he had been hard pressed to find anywhere in Paris. Paris was a glory of sights and sounds, a bouquet perhaps of every flower except the small wild flowers that grow at the side of the country roads. He had always preferred those best. In fact, during spring this year, he had pined for them on his daily walks. The Parisian flowers were haughty, their colours gaudy and gilded when compared to the faint gentle blush on the petals of a primrose stuck in a carriage rut, her head unbowed although her leaves were gilded with mud instead of gold.

Even the churchyards in Paris offered no sanctuary, graves were too often used as tables, chairs or beds for those with no other furniture – or, worse yet – those with nothing better to do. The idle rich. The stagnating wealthy. The debauched and the careless, those who cared nothing for the dead, and little more for the living.

He had once been able to find such peace in the cool avenues lining a graveyard, or the pews of a church. Not so in Paris. He found he could barely attend a Mass without feeling enraged.

Where was the joy in that? Surely in a city so fine and big there had to be some kernel of faith, even if it were as small as the smallest mustard seed.

No, there was little serenity in Paris. Though he found much else to marvel at and write about, indeed nowadays with Enjolras and Les Amis to focus his attentions on, he barely even felt the lack of solitude, of the sheer sweet silence where he could look into his very soul and agree that all was well.

But now, for the Christmas season, he was home. Before greeting his mother, he had stopped in the church to say hello and feel a little peace. There would be no peace at his mother's house, that was certain. There would be more trouble remembering not to discuss Hugo at the table and explaining his cravats and his clothes than there would be holiday spirit, of that he was certain. Of course, in many ways the church was like a home in itself. He knew it, the old wooden benches – each seat and the dips that had been worn slowly into the wood by faithful parishioners since it had first been built. It was a grand old church, one which had survived king and revolution and king again, and still stood. Its roof was simple, and at the front stood nothing but a plain pulpit and a figure of the Christos on his cross, looking down on the congregation with suffering and glory in his eyes.

Jehan could remember sitting in the front row when he was a child, listening to the sound of the people singing – all the people singing as one voice a low deep hymn in strange old words that even their fathers would barely recognize, and looking up at the Christos and seeing his face shining in a beam of light from one of the lamps.

It had been beautiful, and liquid like poetry – like seeing a run of music play down through the fingers of a musician and out into the air again, like a flock of birds taking wing into summer air and everything more.

This was where he felt the most at peace.

So he sat alone in the church and breathed in dust and old incense and the faint hints of smoke and sweat and the paper of prayer books. He pressed his palms against the wood where his father used to sit – just here in this very pew, just here at the front. His hands here and his feet here and his whole person kept right here in exactly the same space as where Jehan himself was sitting now.

He closed his eyes to savor the moment, and – as usual – his mind wandered. He thought of his mother, her thin smiling lips pinched down in the corners and her hair so brown and grey like it had been combed through with winter and age. She would shake her head at him, like she always did, and touch his eye and laugh a little.

_Already, Jean?_ She would say.

Already, maman. Already. You remember the boys in the town – the bigger ones with the fierce dead eyes. I never much cared for them. They could not have ever learned to see the beauty of the world. You remember, maman, when the pastor taught me to fight and you remember the cuts and bruises. Who better than a mother, for her hands soothe the wounds of a country with a touch…

And I'm getting carried away again. You always knew that, too.

Then she would kiss his cheek and tweak his hair-ribbon in her usual teasing way, and call him her daughter until he blushed and then laugh some more.

And then – of course – there would be dinner. Her and M. Prouvaire Himself, the Head of the Household with his biting ways and his impossible standards. Here we are, father. An Heir to wealth and opportunity, wouldn't you say?

A poet, a dreamer, a revolutionary. A believer still in the sanctity of truth and freedom and love for all men.

Jehan sighed and opened his eyes. It was getting dark and he _was_ expected. So he rose and left the church and walked out through the graveyard, only stopping to pause next to a particular stone in his way.

"I know you wouldn't blame her, after all you've been dead a good long while now," he said awkwardly, never quite certain what one should say to one's own father when one was currently on the way to have dinner with one's new and rather less proud father.

The stone made no reply, and for a moment he imagine a long and complicated conversation with at least three verses of twelve stanzas each. He frowned. "I know _you_ would enjoy them, at least," he said with more than a hint of a pout, and continued on his way.

Merry Christmas, father.

Merry Christmas, and peace to all mankind.


	2. God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen: Grantaire

**A/N: Merry Christmas and Happy New Year Atoile. This is for your request for a story about Perceval before he met Les Amis or become Papa Scaramouche. He's 22 in this story, and it's only a few years after he left university. I hope you enjoy it!**

Now you see it and now you don't. A la… there, in your pocket sir? No, in your hat – no… behind the mademoiselle's ear and there now, in his cup. Yes, the fellow across the room. Don't believe me? Well, m'sieurs and medames and all my fine frank feebleminded darlings, why don't you humour your dear Scaramouche and have a look, eh? Oui, that fellow.

The one who looks like hell if hell was particularly interested in investing in poorly-tied cravats, missing buttons, and a nose the size and shape of an asses rear end.

The crown looked, the crowd laughed, the crowd marveled, and wine flowed into the cups of Scaramouche, master of ceremonies, king of the shadows and the dance, and lord of all magical tricks. He smiled a dry half groat of a smile, like the wry crooked croaking of a frog in a dry well, and thanked them one and all, washing the performance away with the bad wine and wishing it would do the same for the heat and the bad air.

"Alec!"

"_Columbine_," he said in a long low drawl, spinning in his chair to survey her with a raised eyebrow and a leer. Get your head out of the clouds, stop winking at that poor sod stood star-struck behind his mother and get in character you silly ninny, or do you want me to tell 'em all you're barely past fifteen, your eyelashes are glued on and you were brought up in a washerwoman's hut out at Nantes?

Now, now, wouldn't that be a pity and a shame to lose all your suitors like that? Aye a terrible shame, so perhaps the beautiful demoiselle will remember that we're in intermission and I – her faithful and humble servant Alec Grantaire am still quite definitively in the part of Scaramouche. Or, as the theatrical godlets would have me, Feste. All depending on where one flings one loyalty. Mine, being soggy with wine and not with pestilential rains and warm beer, stays with the French, our beloved father of revel Moliere, the Commedie and all the things in this life that are true and beautiful.

You may claim to be English and with Shakespeare, that is your prerogative oh table. But there's not a speck of English wood in you, so I defy thee.

"Scaramouche," she gave a pixie-ish grin and curtsied before slapping the back of his head. "You werren't meant to drink any more during the intermission, you _know_ that. Pantaloon _said…_"

"Madam." He rose and bowed, one foot behind the other and hand sketching a flurry of ever more entrancing circles in the air. "Madam, you wound me. I am one foot in the camp of the sober and one foot in the realm of fools. I must be in character or all is lost, so here I am quite sensibly trying to reenter the realm of fools and you would that I would stop?"

"Idiot." She took his wine then, the little minx, and made a face that was really not at all becoming on her. "Fool. Moron. You'll trip over your Hey Nonny Nonnys and you know how much Punchinello hated having them in at all."

"Hang Xavier, and hang his editorializing," Grantaire said hotly, sitting back down and fishing a pick out of his belt to lick his teeth with. Ha ha ha, aren't we witty today my dear darling sot? Lovely. Charming. We're just a pinnacle of intellectualism. "If going on about love gods isn't too silly for us, then why shouldn't we 'hey nonny nonny' with the best of 'em? It's musical and gives me a chance to pick at a guitar for more than just comic relief, and if he's got a problem with it well he can speak to me and not cast aspersions on my enunciation while properly soused."

Lisette sat down too, her skirts swirling out like a halo of white and peach cotton, crisped into pleats and drawn tight enough to constrict any sensible projection she might have had to start with clear out of her. "Can you still play?"

"Can I still speak and walk?"

"Show me." She shoved his guitar at him, and he yanked it from her with a growl. Few things still completely belonged to him anymore. A bit of a room at the top of stairs that squeaked. Three or four books. A poorly paid job. A shirt and shoes and even a whole pair of trousers and some stockings without too many holes. And his guitar. His own true dear guitar whom no one else could bloody well touch, hands off back away and thank you very awfully kindly.

Still, here was an opportunity to hale the souls back out of the audience and into their pockets. Dangerous things, intermissions. It let the audience step back out of fantasy and fairy-tale in into the cold heartless world of reality and taxes and bills and quarrels with lovers and dead relatives and funerals that perhaps one couldn't quite afford to go to and didn't want to attend anyway because they might see other particular relatives there along with the relatives who had died.

Always a dangerous thing to break that fragile shadow-world spell in the middle and let in the light, even if only for the space of a half-hour for wine and to let those with tiny bladders go to the latrine.

"Join me, then." He nodded at her and pulled the guitar to his lap. "Mesdames and messieurs, isn't she a wonder? Isn't she a talented creature? Spun out of fairy dust by the goddess Aphrodite herself, the angel is - as beautiful as Helen and as talented as Athena and as modest as Diana's Vestal Virgins in their marble halls." He didn't even have to raise his head or his voice to have them listening to him, and Columbine sent him a poisonous look before turning her best 'Cupid Loves Me And So Should You' smile on the crowd. "Here she provides me with my own muse so that we can brighten your last few minutes before the curtain rises once more on that fateful scene in Messina, and she is going to accompany me on her flute. Clap, children – clap for Papa Scaramouche and his Columbine."

They clapped. They always clapped when he told them, laughed when he told them, listened to the secrets which he whispered into their ears. He slipped past their defenses and found the core of what they wanted and he made them believe he could give it to them without a promise or even a look, but simply by knowing.

Scaramouche always knew, he always could and he always would.

It made Grantaire laugh sometimes, behind the mask where no one else could see.

Lisette produced her flute and the started, a lilting something which they had played together many times before. But not when he had been drinking and the devil of wine was in his fingers, not when he had been speaking and laughing on the stage to Malvolio and Olivia and Viola – or Rhodomont and Leonore and Pierrot (who was meant to be a girl but then Shakespeare started it).

They started slow, they started soft and bright and smiling. It was a country tune he had heard first while playing with two boys in his house back in Arras. His mother had been singing it to herself, one of those songs that didn't make any sense and seemed to go on and on and on for the simple sake of repeating itself. He had remembered it, and refigured it for the guitar and then taught it to Columbine in a few lazy afternoons when the others were rehearsing and they had nothing to do but sit on the corner and amuse passers-by.

They started slow.

He could hear the swish swish swish of his mother's skirts passing over the floorboards. She always smelled of lye and soap and thread. She always sounded like a woman too tired to do what she did and still have a heart left in her chest, but she had managed for them.

He had the devil of drink in his fingers.

He could see her face, first smoother than youth then older and older until she was a woman trapped by time in the cage of wrinkles and graying hair, no longer young but not old either, just tired and over-worked and fragile as a brittle-boned bird.

Perceval played faster, and then faster again. He was smiling at the crowd, almost heard them begin to clap along with the beat, almost heard Lisette stop playing, unable to keep up. But he couldn't quite hear them over the voice of his mother. Even a drunk has a mother, of course. Even we cynics and gutter-worms manage to show some small bit of filial affection.

Even if we won't go to the funeral.

Swish swish swish, and the song was over. The people laughed and clapped, and Columbine pouted reproachfully at him, allowed that he was sober enough to keep his Hey Nonny Nonnys, and ushered him back to the grease and magic of the world behind the stage so he couldn't drink any more. He was a fool, he was not mad or drowned, and he would rather have been drowned.

For the rain, it raineth every day.

Hey

Nonny

Nonny

No


	3. Good King Wenceslaus: Enjolras

**A/N: Merry Christmas and a Happy New year to Bakura From School, who requested this Enjolras and Combeferre centric story.**

Luc Courfeyrac had been trying for weeks and weeks to find some social occasion that Enjolras could _not_ turn down. The ladies whose attention his boasts of Enjolras' acquaintance had garnered were, after all, beginning to believe that said acquaintance was nothing but a fabrication. However, with the coming of Christmas, he was nothing if not being positively _bombarded_ with notices and invitations, and Luc thought cheerily that surely among them he could find _one_ Enjolras was willing to go along to. One in particular did stand out, and it was in good spirits that he set forth to request his friend and leader's presence at the party being hosted by some of his old law-student friends, whose company he was sure Enjolras would find quite stimulating, and they were all young and strong and of willing mind, so that it might be he could even find a few converts among –

"No," Enjolras said with a pointed look. "Consider it an assignment to make them yourself, as I have other business to attend to."

"That's what you said for the last six parties I've proposed we attend together," Luc said, pouting a bit for the full effect. "You can bring Combeferre, even, if that's what's annoying you."

"That's not the issue I take, Courfeyrac." Luc did not bother trying to explain that he'd been trying to make a joke. "I am sure he will be busy as well, and the Republic needs me more than your grisettes do."

"It isn't my grisettes or anything like it," Courfeyrac protested. "Just this once. You're drying up. Come on, why don't you?" Enjolras shook his head with a very small, severe sort of smile, and Luc felt that he was nearing the bottom of his deck of cards. "You really should meet my friends, Enjolras. They've heard so much about you and find you really inspiring."

"Do they really."

"They do," Luc said, seeing his chance. "I've been trying to win them over myself, actually, but I think meeting you would really do the trick."

"Don't flatter me like that," Enjolras said with a frown. "But if you really think so…"

"I do."

"All right. Just this once - I'll come. For the good of the Republic."

Augustin Enjolras looked around the room, and realized suddenly that Courfeyrac might very well _have_ said 'elles' rather than 'ils' in referring to those friends eager to meet him…fortunately, said young ladies were clustered around Courfeyrac instead, casting frightened and longing looks in his direction from time to time. He had already made the rounds of the other students there and found them to be the insufferable sort of dandies that nothing short of a revolution itself might improve upon. He would discuss this with Courfeyrac later; for now, he merely told his friend that he was going out for some air and made his way through the hall, down the stairs and out into the street.

What a cold night it was getting to be, he noted, pulling his coat closer about him. And so many must be without refuge. Enjolras drifted off into thought, the occasional passerby serving only as unnamed characters in his meditations.

"Enjolras?" he heard close by, some time later. "Enjolras. _Augustin_." Enjolras turned to see Combeferre standing beside him. "How long have you been here?" Eugene asked, looking over his glasses.

"I don't know," Augustin admitted. Now that he thought about it, he couldn't even feel the wind stinging his face. "There's quite a party up there," he said, nodding up toward the scene he had left who-knows-how-long before.

Combeferre followed his gaze. "Courfeyrac?"

"Oui."

"Mhm." A knowing look spread across Combeferre's face. "In that case, may I consider you free of obligation?"

"Certainly."

As they continued down the last of the streets he had memorized before setting out, Eugene felt the wind grow a little stronger. "Are you cold, Enjolras?"

"Not at all."

Combeferre sighed a little, wondering why he had bothered to ask. Enjolras, he knew, would never fully accept his own humanity. He suspected that to do so would involve more disappointment than his leader was willing to risk. Combeferre almost began to tell Enjolras to draw up his scarf anyway, but then he saw the object of their mission before them: a sad and broken-looking building, much like its inhabitants. He shifted the weight of the package he carried in his arms, and nodded toward the door. "Could you knock for me?"

Augustin's firm and commanding knock brought forth a solemn, sooty boy whose walk betrayed bones weakened by rickets. "Wat'choo after?" he said in some surprise.

"We're looking for Jean," Combeferre said. "He said we'd find him here."

"You're th' doctor, then. 'E's inside." The urchin peered at Combeferre's burden. "Wat'choo got there?"

"Follow me and you can find out."

The inside of the building was just as decrepit as the outside; holes were worn, or more probably knocked, in many of the walls, laths exposed, dirt and crumbled plaster serving as carpet. Children's voices babbled within despite the cold that came straight through the walls. Combeferre glanced to his friend and saw that for once he was not reflecting, but intensely caught up in the scene around him. This was good.

"Through 'ere," the child said as he ducked through the torn curtain covering one of these holes. Combeferre and Enjolras followed him through. There was Jean all right, perched on the edge of a lonely, chipped low table. He looked up as they entered and pulled a sort of smile, saying simply, "You came."

"I try to keep promises."

Jean could not be more than fourteen – none of the children living here could. At the beginning of winter they had taken over this building as shelter, which Eugene had learned a few weeks ago when Jean's sister had died under the hospital's care. Eugene had promised to come around and visit, to see that all was well, and so here he was, only with Enjolras in tow. The children who were beginning to accumulate around Jean's knees didn't seem to mind.

One of them poked at the package Combeferre had just set down beside Jean on the table. "What's that?" Jean gave him a questioning look as well.

Eugene shrugged mildly as he started to undo the wrappings. "Some food. Blankets for the little ones. The medicine for that burn of yours – you've kept it bandaged, haven't you?" Jean nodded, his hand going unconsciously to the spot on his arm.

One of the various grubby little boys around them squealed in delight and hugged a smaller child beside him. "Mimi – I _told_ you Père Noël was coming!"

"You don't _look _like Père Noël," the girl said, looking up at Combeferre with somewhat suspicious eyes.

Combeferre felt an arm around his shoulder and looked over in surprise to see Enjolras' eyes _smiling_ – lips solemn as ever, but gaze downright _jolly_. "Well, of course not. He's just Père Noël's grandson," the blond said very seriously. "He can't do it all himself, you know."

Eugene had a fleeting image of his real grandfather in the part of Père Noël and nearly laughed aloud. "Yes, and this fellow here…"

"You're an angel, aren't you?" asked one child, looking up at Enjolras.

Eugene shot Augustin a grinning look. "Yes, exactly. You've caught us." Jean's mouth flickered a little into a smile, quieting some of the older children who were beginning to nudge each other and roll their eyes.

The infant merely clung onto Enjolras' leg. "Then, will you tell Maman I miss her when you go back to Heaven?"

"Absolutely." Somewhat to Eugene's surprise, Augustin actually picked the child up and balanced him - her? He couldn't tell under all the dirt and rags – awkwardly at his waist, and began to gently question it about itsalphabet…oh, very funny, Augustin.

They didn't stay very long – just long enough for Combeferre to tend to Jean's burn and look after a few worrisome coughs while Enjolras amused the starstruck little ones with stories of Utopia and the Republic and Heaven (they all sounded much the same, really.) After that it was out into the cold again, which seemed all the colder after the warmth from the children pressing around.

"This is your flat," Combeferre said, turning about after some time's walking; they'd nearly missed it in the snow.

"So it is." Enjolras looked at the building for a few seconds as if he'd never seen it before, then nodded goodbye and turned to go up the steps.

"Enjolras!" He turned back at Combeferre's shout, and Eugene gave him a nod and a bit of a smile. "Merry Christmas."

Enjolras paused, and then he smiled back. "Merry Christmas, my friend. And – thank you."

No, Enjolras _my_ friend…thank _you_.


	4. Hark The Herald Angels Sing: Bahorel

**A/N - For HisPrincessHope and her sister who wanted a story on how Grantaire joined Les Amis. Written by TW who took it from Dominic Bahorel's POV - and wishing you a wonderful New Year and a belated Merry Christmas. To Mlle Patria - I am working on your request and hope to have it finished soon. Sorry about the delay!**

"Dominic," said the delightfully amicable fellow currently calling himself Lucien Courfeyrac, "I have a proposition for you."

Bahorel took a moment to shoot his billiard ball across the table (and he missed – worse luck) before considering an answer. "What kind of proposition? Does this one involve skipping class to play billiards and get drunk with Grantaire, here, like the last eleven?"

"Who's counting?" grinned Grantaire from next to Courfeyrac, drink in hand. Dieu. Keep it there any longer an' it'd end up becoming a natural extension of his arm.

Courfeyrac roared with laughter. "Touché. No, no, this is a _political_ proposition."

"You know how I feel about politics, Lucien," Dominic said as he refilled his own drink.

"So I do," Lucien said. "You've got friends in politics from here clear to the other side of the Seine. Nobody seems to mind you're a student, somehow."

Bahorel nodded in what he felt was a suitably sage manner. "That, cher ami, is because I'm _not_ one. Except about once a year when my parents ask."

Grantaire gave a bark-laugh and Courfeyrac chuckled. "I'm really serious," Lucien said, then laughed again. "Yes! Me, serious!"

Dominic chuckled along. "Oh, yes, and Grantaire's sober."

"Sober as a duck," Grantaire pronounced solemnly.

Courfeyrac snickered but then actually fell quiet. "Dominic, ami, I know a group you need to meet. I've been meeting with them for a while now and –"

"Is that where you keep disappearing to!" Dominic broke in. "Grantaire and I have been swapping bets for months on who this new mistress was."

"Hey, does this mean I don't get my five francs?" Grantaire said.

"Take 'em anyway, just buy me a drink tomorrow," Bahorel said, tossing him the coins. Grantaire caught them neatly and pocketed them with one of his clownish grins.

Lucien shook his head, smiling. "_Not_ a mistress, Bahorel. The Friends of the ABC."

"What, are you all going around educating the illiterate?" Dominic snorted.

"Ostensibly," Courfeyrac said. "A-bai-ssé, Bahorel."

"Hah!" Bahorel dropped into a chair and looked over to their little club's third member. "What d'you think of it, Grantaire?"

"It's a good enough pun," he said offhandedly. "Must've been a philosophy student that came up with it."

"It's a law student at the head, actually," Courfeyrac said. "Name of Enjolras – I don't mind saying, he's like a blazing angel. Grand-R'll have a better reference than I."

"Do I get to come along, then?" Grantaire said, perking up.

Courfeyrac looked uneasy for a moment, then laughed. "Sure, why not? At least we'll all have a laugh, if Bahorel won't come."

"Oh, I'll come all right. I want to see what Grantaire has to say about this blazing angel of yours."

"Then it's settled!" Courfeyrac grinned. "Wednesday night at my place, you two. Hey – Jacqu'line, chérie! Another bottle over here!"

Courfeyrac led Bahorel and Grantaire to a café called Musain, where Bahorel'd been a few times before. He remembered the food being awful and was glad when Courfeyrac merely winked at the mistress and continued up to the back stairs.

The room already held about a dozen men, talking, arguing, drinking. Dominic spotted the man Courfeyrac meant immediately; he was sitting alone with a glass of water and a news-journal. Grantaire seemed to have noticed him as well. "I'll be a good boy, so I will – I swear it," he murmured blankly. Dominic wondered how far from sober the man _was._

"Come on, you've got to be introduced," Courfeyrac said, ignoring both Grantaire's murmurs and his friends' hellos and dragging Grantaire and Bahorel by their arms before this young god. "Enjolras!" he cried out cheerfully. "I've brought you two new pupils for the Cause."

"Another?" Enjolras said mildly, but with a look that Dominic could feel piercing his soul. "I don't doubt your own ardor, Courfeyrac, but you've yet to bring any friends of yours who stay."

"This will be different," Courfeyrac said. "Enjolras, this is Bahorel. A sort of anarchist. He's got revolutionary contacts all over Paris." Dominic was tempted to tease Lucien about exaggerating, but he couldn't quite manage to speak out under Enjolras' gaze. And to be deemed an anarchist…well, it was pretty fancy, but not _entirely_ untrue.

"He sounds promising," Enjolras said before turning his eyes upon Grantaire. Now that he could move again, Dominic turned to Gantaire as well and saw the poor fellow mesmerized and in awe. "Who is this?"

Courfeyrac shifted uncomfortably. "This…is Grantaire, Enjolras. He wants to learn about our ways. An open man." Bahorel wondered if Enjolras was familiar with Courfeyrac's reputation for diplomacy. Or how often said diplomacy hinged on making things up and laughing them off later. Given the look Enjolras was giving Grantaire, it probably wasn't doing much good anyway.

"I see," Enjolras said finally. "Introduce them to the other Friends. See what Combeferre thinks."

"Is he always so serious?" Dominic asked as Lucien pulled them over to a half-full table.

"Always. You get used to it in time. Hey, Grantaire, what d'you think of him?"

Grantaire took his seat in a daze. "I think I would like to meet the sculptor who animated so fine a statue."

Lucien laughed. "Pandora, is it?"

"No," Grantaire murmured. "No, it was Galatea, and poor Pygmalion."

Dominic wasn't listening; he had already spotted a familiar bald head at the table. "Lesgle, you didn't tell me you were political!"

"It does happen from time to time," Lesgle said cheerfully. "I was just telling Maurice...oh, you haven't met him. Joli," he said to the sickly-looking redhead beside him, "this is Bahorel. Bahorel, this is Joly, without whom I confess I would be quite lost."

"Chahbed," Joly mumbled through a handkerchief.

There were others at the meeting and Bahorel and Grantaire were introduced to all of them in turn. Combeferre turned out to be the stuffy academic type, mainly concerned with filling Enjolras' water glass and trying to make everyone else think practically, but Courfeyrac and a few of his ABC acquaintances turned out to be plenty liberal and rowdy for Dominic's tastes. It wasn't until Lucien elbowed him to be quiet and shot a worried look in Grantaire's direction that he even noticed the other man wasn't next to them.

"All I am saying," Grantaire was saying unsteadily to Enjolras, "is that revolution…is a very, very bad idea. Why should man try to improve his lot? There is no real evidence that he can do so and I for one do not see the point in trying…so many lives wasted."

"No life given in defense of Liberty is wasted, Grantaire," Enjolras said disapprovingly.

"He's going to get himself killed," Dominic muttered to Lucien.

"Dieu, so he is," Lucien said, white.

"And besides," Enjolras continued, "how can you say that man has not improved his lot? Have we not come far from the oppressive times of our grandfathers, when so many men were nothing but cattle to be used and abused by their high-hung betters?"

"I suppose," Grantaire said slowly, "that we have. In some ways. But in the ways it counts – no. Let the world go to hell, I say – it's got it into its head that it wants to go there, and there's no use arguing with it."

Enjolras' eyes suddenly blazed and Dominic saw the angel Lucien had warned them about. "Then whyare you here?"

Dominic and Lucien made their way back around to Grantaire later that night to find him so thoroughly drunk he could barely recognize them. "Hey, c'mon, let's get home," Luc said uneasily.

"Y'go on," Grantaire slurred. "I c'n find m'own way."

Enjolras focused an annoyed look on the drunken man. "Go home, Grantaire."

To Dominic's surprise, Grantaire immediately lurched to his feet and clung onto Luc for support. "An'thing y'say, Apollo."

"Do not call me that." And Grantaire fell silent. "It was good of you to bring Bahorel, Courfeyrac. _He'll_ be welcome here." That is to say, Dominic saw immediately, _unlike Grantaire, this drunken heretic nuisance here_. Well. It was Enjolras' group, and he did have that right, didn't he? But Grantaire didn't go away – he showed up of his own accord at the next meeting, without being told of the time. And at the next, and the next, despite the increasing tension he had with Enjolras. He grew to be an increasingly drunken fixture in the corner, tolerated by all except the angel-leader. Occasionally he would chase off new recruits and be banned for weeks at a time, but he always charmed his way back in. Somehow Courfeyrac was forgiven for the introduction (mostly, Bahorel thought, because his highly willing and useful self had come along with it.)

C'est la vie.


End file.
